Witch Myth Omnibus: A Yew Hollow Cozy Mystery
Page 1
Table of Contents
Witch Myth Omnibus: A Yew Hollow Cozy Mystery
Download the Best Selling Prequel- Yew Hollow Book 0
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Witch Myth Omnibus: A Yew Hollow Cozy Mystery
Copyright 2016 All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means without prior written permission, except for brief excerpts in reviews or analysis
FREE- Download the Best Selling Prequel- Yew Hollow Book 0
Witch Myth Book 0- Click Here to Download on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IM37VXU
Morgan Summers hates talking to ghosts, but when the victim of a ghastly murder asks her for help from beyond the grave, Morgan can’t say no. Soon, Morgan herself is blamed for the murder, and the town is out for blood. Can Morgan clear her name, discover the real killer, and help her new ghostly friend cross over to the next life?
Witch Myth Book 0- Click Here to Download on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IM37VXU
Witch Myth: Awakening- Book 1
Chapter One
In Which the Story Begins
*** The free prequel is available in the TOC and front matter of this book***
Teagan Riley woke out of a dead sleep. A bead of sweat trickled down her temple. She lay in bed, frozen, the horrific face of her nightmare lingering on the insides of her eyelids. It was a face Teagan had loved once, strong and stoic, but life had rained down hard on them, and Teagan had tired of it. Now he was gone, only present in dreams, and Teagan thanked whatever god above had made the decision to separate them.
She counted her breaths. It was a meditation technique she’d learned from her therapist, the one Teagan had sought out after her husband’s death. Four counts to inhale, four counts to exhale. Clear your mind. Focus on breathing. Focus on breathing. Focus on—his face—breathing.
After another set of breaths, Teagan gave up. It was crap advice, she thought. A joke, even. Meditation was for yogis and the Dalai Lama, not an elementary school teacher who’d been widowed at the ripe old age of twenty-seven. She sat up in bed, unsticking herself from the sweat-soaked sheets. The nightmare had been particularly violent tonight, and Teagan had to stop herself from reimagining the familiar pair of fists beating down on her, catching a glimpse of her bruised face in the reflection of his wedding band. She pressed her face into the cold side of a pillow and waited for her pulse to slow. Over, she thought. It’s all over.
A loud creak interrupted her thought process. She peered around the room, squinting through the hazy moonlight that filtered in through the gaps in the curtains, but all was still. It was an old house. Floorboards buckled, doors swayed open and shut of their own accord, and occasionally things creaked for no reason at all. Nothing to be paranoid about.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, Teagan saw the floor-to-ceiling bookcase next to the bed teeter forward, ejecting novels and old education textbooks from its shelves. Frantic, she tried to move out of its path, but her legs were tangled up in the twisted sheets. She kicked herself free, heaving herself off the far edge of the bed and rolling to the floor. The bookcase crashed down, right where Teagan had so recently lain, splintering into several pieces. The sharp corner of a wayward dictionary caught Teagan’s scalp, digging a gash into her hairline. She ducked her head, curling up into a ball, and shielded herself with her hands until the bookcase settled.
When she dared to look up again, it was with the expression of a defeated soul. Nothing could go right. The bookcase was irreparable. The luxurious satin sheets Teagan had found on sale were torn and dirty. Dust and debris littered the entire bedroom. Teagan’s head pounded. She lightly prodded her temple then held her fingers close to her face. Even in the dim light, she could see that an alarming amount of blood poured from the results of the dictionary’s escape attempt. With a resigned sigh, she stood, picked her way carefully through the disaster area, and switched the light on in the adjoining bathroom.
She avoided looking herself in the eye as she leaned in to the mirror to inspect the cut. It was deep and possibly worthy of stitches, so Teagan pressed a wad of toilet paper to it to stem the bleeding while waiting for the tap water to warm up. Then she rinsed the laceration out over the sink, splashed her face to rid herself of any leftover sweat, and looked up.
Until death do us part.
The message, dabbed on the mirror with her own blood, caused Teagan to take a hasty step back. She tripped over the lip of the tub and fell backward, pulling the curtain and its rod down with her. She squeezed her eyes shut. It had to be a nightmare. She was still trapped in her dreams. She opened her eyes. The vow was still there.
Until death do us part.
Without warning, the mirror lifted off the wall and crashed to the floor near Teagan’s feet, showering Teagan with broken glass. With a shriek, she jumped to her feet, hurdled the majority of the glass, and raced back through the bedroom. Behind her, the house seemed hell-bent on self-destructing. Windows shattered as Teagan blew by them, furniture upended itself, doors slammed shut, and as she took the stairs two at a time to the first floor, the banister exploded as if someone had planted an IED in the old wood.
“Wake up, wake up!” Teagan pleaded with herself, tearing into the kitchen toward the back door of the house. She ducked as a vase of flowers levitated from its place on the kitchen table and threw itself at her. It smashed against the wall behind her, splattering water and lily petals across the floor. Teagan slid across the slippery tile, grasped the handle of the back door, and tried to wrench it open.
It wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard Teagan yanked at it. Then every burner on the stove roared to life, sending a wave of heat across Teagan’s body. The door to the oven banged open and spilled a mouthful of flame and smoke out as if the oven had been on the entire night. In seconds, the kitchen had become an inferno, trapping Teagan against the unmoving door. Sweat soaked her flannel pajamas. Her body frozen with fear, her mind raced, rifling through her limited options for escape.
In one swift movement, Teagan seized a nearby frying pan. The metal handle nearly seared her skin off, but she chucked it through the small window at the top of the back door, pulverizing the glass. Then, planting a knee on the nearby counter, she hoisted herself up and out. She felt her palms slice open as she heaved herself through the window headfirst. The broken glass caught at her hips and legs, ripping through her pajama pants, but she wriggled forward, almost free of the raging fire in the kitchen. Then someone or something grabbed her ankle and pulled.
She screamed, kicking wildly as whatever invisible entity tried to drag her back through the window. Teagan’s foot connected with something that felt suspiciously like a jawline. A jolt of pain raced through her ankle, but whoever held Teagan captive let go. She launched herself through the window, a shard of glass ripping open her thigh, and with a grunt, landed heavily on one shoulder. She ignored the pain, stumbling to her feet. Her shoulder felt dislocated. Her ankle was swelling, but it could hold her weight. As the house behind her was devoured by flames, igniting the night sky, Teagan
sprinted off across the backyard, toward the small town of Yew Hollow, and never looked back.
Chapter Two
In Which My New Job Takes Off
The Yew Hollow Police Force mailed my new detective badge to me, despite the fact that the station was only about ten minutes from my house. The spring morning it arrived was a beautiful one in Yew Hollow. Dusty sunlight illuminated my new loft, and the soft chatter of awakening wildlife filtered in through the open windows. I extracted the shiny badge from its envelope, running my fingers across its smooth surface. In six short months, I had gone from Morgan Summers: Psychic Medium to Morgan Summers: Legitimate Detective. Well, not so legitimate, but my employment was pretty reputable for a twenty-nine-year-old who’d barely finished college. Yew Hollow’s police force had made an exception to the rule in my case, only because I had a unique skill that the other detectives didn’t possess. I could see and speak to ghosts.
Yew Hollow, my hometown, was a strange and magical place. My family, a coven of eclectic witches, had settled the area in the late 1600s, and we still had a significant impact on the way the town was run. The townspeople had learned to leave us to it, ignoring or accepting the fact that Yew Hollow often experienced all sorts of odd occurrences. The only thing was, ever since I’d channeled an unstoppable power through the yew tree at the center of town last October, these odd events mostly consisted of several townspeople dying in sporadic accidents.
They came in threes, these deaths. Earlier in the year, we lost twelve members of Yew Hollow, always to some peculiar accident. One guy slipped in the shower and banged the back of his head on the bathtub tap. A middle-aged woman had somehow managed to garrote herself with a clothesline as she hung her laundry out to dry. Someone had even mishandled a can opener to the point of a messy, unintentional suicide. It was silly but tragic, and at every scene, the familiar feel of witchcraft lingered in the air. At the police station, we’d decided to keep that detail hush-hush.
A loud ring punctuated my thoughts as my cell phone demanded my attention. I glanced at the screen. It was a text message from my boss, the chief of police, asking for my presence at the station. I’d been helping the force out with yet another death. About two weeks ago, an elementary school gym teacher—a man named Ronan Riley whom I’d never met before—had been found strangled in the woods behind his own house. When I’d originally examined the crime scene, I’d expected to find more traces of witchcraft, but there was no hint of magic around the body or the area. Later his wife had found a suicide note. We were in the process of clarifying the details, but it seemed that this death was, quite simply, a run-of-the-mill tragedy.
Before leaving the loft, I checked my reflection in the full-length mirror by the front door. Apple-green eyes, just like my father’s, gazed back. I’d dressed in jeans, a casual top, and a pair of slip-on boat shoes. Out of time to do anything with my shoulder-length golden-brown hair, I pulled it up into a casual bun at the top of my head. The chief of police always nagged me on my lack of business attire, but in such a small town, I couldn’t be bothered to go shopping for a blazer just to fulfill the illusion of professionalism. Besides, spring in Yew Hollow was far too pleasant to waste the breeze by wearing slacks and panty hose. Shoot me.
I pinned my detective badge to my belt loop, left the loft, and strolled off along the bumpy dirt path that I had worn through the soft grass and new blooms of the woods. My new home was a renovated barn, buried in the forest behind the original Summers house. I liked my privacy, but it was comforting to know that my family was always within walking distance if I ever needed them. As the ground evened out and the trees thinned, I found my three sisters, Malia, Karma, and Laurel, decorating the old swing set in the backyard of the Summers house. As I headed in their direction, it occurred to me how different the four of us were. Malia and Laurel had inherited my mother’s trademark grey eyes, blond hair, and slender figures. Karma and I were both more petite, with olive complexions and darker shades of hair.
“Morning, all,” I said, pivoting around one of the metal supports of the swing set like Gene Kelly with an umbrella. “What are you guys talking about?”
Karma, installed on one of the swings, flew past me, reaching out her bare foot to nudge my shoulder. “The end-of-spring, start-of-summer festival.”
I groaned, rolling my eyes. “Not another festival. Didn’t we just celebrate the beginning of spring?”
Malia, the eldest of the Summers sisters, smiled serenely at my lack of town spirit. My sisters were members of the Yew Hollow Preservation Society, so it fell upon them to plan the town’s various events. Thankfully, I had yet to be recruited.
“I like the festivals,” said my youngest sibling, Laurel. She caressed the petals of a nearby daisy.
“Glad to hear it,” I said. I leaned down to pluck the daisy from the grass and then pushed it into Laurel’s wild hair behind her ear. “Gotta run. I was supposed to be at the station about ten minutes ago.”
“Anything good?” Karma asked. A gust of air whipped a wayward strand of my hair into my mouth as she swung past me again.
“Not sure yet,” I said, blowing the offending hair out from between my lips. I turned away from my sisters, waggling my fingers in a temporary farewell. As I headed toward the center of town, I called over my shoulder, “I’ll swing by later and let you know.”
They waved me off, and I started toward the road at the end of the Summerses’ driveway. As I passed the main house, I caught a glimpse of my mother and the leader of our coven, Cassandra, through the big kitchen window and waved. She responded with a lazy wink and a hand motion that I’d learned was her way of saying she needed to speak with me at some point. I nodded, pointed down the road toward the police station, then gestured back at her. She gave me the thumbs-up.
On my way through town, I stopped at the local bakery to pick up two dozen assorted donuts and a large container of coffee. When I’d first started working for the police force, some of the officers were skeptical of my employment. I guess I couldn’t blame them. I’d never had any experience as a detective before the force hired me. So every Monday, I’d wormed my way into their hearts and minds with a bribery of confectionary goods. Now everyone at the force loved me. Balancing the boxes of donuts in one hand and the coffee in the other, I kicked open the door of the station. A few startled desk officers glanced up, disrupted from their early-morning office duties by my unsubtle entrance.
“Who wants donuts?” I asked, raising the boxes above my head. At once, I was surrounded by officers, all fighting for their favorites. I set the boxes down on a nearby desk, opening each one for easy access. “There’s coffee too, everyone.”
The chief of police, a portly man named Marco Torres, emerged from his office and took a jelly-filled donut from one of the boxes.
“You know, Summers,” he said, balancing the donut in one hand and filling a Styrofoam cup to the brim with black coffee with the other, “I’m trying to watch my weight.”
“Sorry, I just love catering to stereotypes,” I replied and reached into a box to claim a chocolate-sprinkled donut before they were all gone. “No one’s forcing you to eat them.”
“If I’m presented with an opportunity, I have to take it,” Torres said. He bit down into his donut, and jelly burst out from its opposite side. “That’s one of the first things they teach you at the police academy.”
“What about the opportunity to watch your weight?” I asked, feeling slightly nauseated as Torres rotated the pastry and captured the escaping jelly.
“What about your opportunity to wear an outfit that actually makes you look like a detective?” he retorted.
I waved this away and poured myself a cup of coffee. “You’re just jealous because I don’t have to wear a hokey-ass uniform. Now, do you actually need me today, or did you just know I was going to bring in donuts?”
He grunted in acknowledgement, set down his coffee, and gestured with his pastry-free hand for me to follow him. As he l
ed me to the back of the station, toward the one and only interrogation room, he filled me in on the situation.
“Remember Ronan Riley? The gym teacher we found? Well, his wife showed up today. She looks like shit, kinda like she got run over by a truck. Lacerations everywhere, dislocated shoulder, fractured ankle, the whole shebang.”
“What’s the twist?” I asked. I popped open a tiny container of creamer and stirred it into my coffee. If there was any perk to living in a small town, it was that the coffee was always freshly made, rather than burnt away to bitterness as it would be in a chain coffee shop.
“She says her husband did it,” Torres explained, shoving the last bite of his donut into his wide, mustachioed mouth. “Considering we picked up his body over two weeks ago, I figured this was right up your alley.”
I frowned, confused. “Even if it is her husband’s ghost, he wouldn’t be able to affect her physically,” I said. “Ghosts can’t interact with the physical realm, no matter how strong their presence is.”
Torres shrugged, halting outside the door of the interrogation room, his hand on the handle. “She said she was being haunted. I called you. That’s about all I care to know on this one. Now, if someone alive is kicking the shit out of her, I’m all ears. By the way, she also says he burned their house down. The inn is full of spring flingers, but you should be able to find her a room.”
With that, he handed me a thick file with the label “Riley” stamped on it in red, flung open the door to the room, and gestured me inside. Behind the desk sat a young woman in her midtwenties. Torres was right. She looked as if she’d narrowly escaped a reckless car accident. There was a large cut on her forehead, sewn together with four or five stitches. Her face was bruised, a sling supported her left shoulder, her hands and arms were bandaged nearly the whole way up, and a single crutch leaned against the far wall. Behind the bruising, her eyes were set deeply in her skull, and anger and exhaustion seemed to wrinkle the skin around her mouth.